How child care became a major 2024 election issue

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Sandtown-Winchester Child Care Center in Baltimore, Maryland on Monday, January 2021. (Photo by Matt Roth for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Washington Post via Getty Images

Fyears, the high cost of child care in the United States was considered a women’s problem. This can put a strain on their wallets, create chaos in the schedules they have to manage, and even derail their careers. But for many business leaders and lawmakers, it was seen as a family issue rather than a business or economic one.

In this week’s newsletter, we explore two signs that these ideas are changing. One of them is new research and data produced by companies such as KPMG, the professional services and accounting giant. My colleague Maria Gracia Santillana Linares wrote on Friday about her newly released Parental Disruption Index, which is based on previously unpublished data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and identifies lost work hours and annual and lifetime wages associated with children. problems with access to care. The new index will track such numbers on a monthly basis and determine the total number of lost work hours based on employees’ shifting of their schedules, a key metric in quantifying the cost of productivity to a business.

Meanwhile, Reshma Saujani, who co-founded Moms First, has consistently campaigned to make child care a bigger issue in this year’s presidential election, pushing candidates on both sides to better approach an issue that is one of rare regions agreement between parties. About 80% of Republicans, 88% of independents and 99% of Democrats want candidates to have a plan or policy committed to helping working parents afford high-quality child care, according to the First Five Years Fund. Federal education and child care programs. Forbes spoke with Saujani about the impact of her efforts this year in the interview below.

HUMAN CAPITAL

Amid Deadly Listeria Outbreak at Boar’s Head Plant in Jarratt, Virginia, which threatened America’s largest deli meat brand, ForbesChloe Sorvino’s latest story highlights several lawsuits workers have filed in recent years alleging harassment or discrimination at the company. One 2019 lawsuit from Ohio alleged racial discrimination and a culture in which Black employees were often overlooked for promotions; Sorvino shares details about others. Boar’s Head called the allegations “baseless allegations” in a statement to Forbes.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Generative AI is being applied in new ways, from helping marketers find lack of diversity in advertising to using AI agents to perform customer service activities. ForbesMegan Poinski recently spoke with SeeMe Index co-founder Asha Shivaji about using AI to determine how diverse a brand is represented in its advertising, as well as Crunchbase’s chief product officer about how the company is using AI to improve decision-making. Meanwhile, Rashi Srivastava looks at how Decagon’s AI agents helped the company secure $65 million in funding.

HYBRID WORK

We’ve all heard about remote workers being encouraged to move to smaller cities or rural areas to help boost the local economy. But Tulsa has revenue thanks to new research from Harvard and other universities, detailed in New York Times. The study found that remote workers who moved to Tulsa saved an average of $25,000 in annual housing costs, and the move generated approximately $14.9 million in annual income tax revenue and $5.8 million in sales taxes in Oklahoma and Tulsa. the researchers calculated.

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann is unveiling a coworking rival with a new concept called Workflow, which Bloomberg reports will be a “more grown-up version” of the coworking company he co-founded and failed to buy out in a recent bid. The new company “will aim to create a relaxed atmosphere with trendy art and chic furniture, rather than serving kombucha and beer in offices filled with frantic twenty-somethings,” Bloomberg reports.

WHAT’S NEXT: RESHMA SAUJANI

Moms First founder Reshma Saujani

Photo courtesy of Moms First

Just three weeks before the election Forbes spoke with Reshma Saujani, founder of the human rights organization Moms come firstabout her efforts to elevate child care as an issue in this year’s presidential election. Excerpts from the conversation below have been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us how you promoted this issue in the elections.

When I started this work a couple of years ago, I was talking to politicians and saying, why haven’t we gotten through child care? And they said: the problem is that this is number 13 on the list. It will never get done unless it is prioritized.

We have developed a strategy for how child care issues are asked as questions (during debates). Our petition was signed by 15,000 moms. We reached out to women and mothers within the organization and offered to use their power or influence to raise this issue. And it happened. The question has been asked. Both candidates, Trump and Biden (at the time), simply decided to talk about their golf game instead.

Then I had the opportunity to ask a question (to the Economic Club of New York). … His people were informed of what questions they might ask him. … He wasn’t ready. He sort of sums up the answer, and it becomes one of the viral videos of this election cycle. What was remarkable after this…every network was talking and discussing how to fix the child care situation. Not only about his answer, but also about how to arrange child care?

So when the vice presidential debate unfolds, our issue is front and center. They talked about it for eight minutes. … Then you see both candidates release statements or include their positions on child care issues in their political platforms. We have made child care a central issue in this election. I think this just showed us that we moms have more power than we think.

What haven’t they said yet about what they’re going to do that you want to hear?

First, I want to see more specifics. Second, I want a firm commitment that this will be one of their priority issues in the first 100 days. For both candidates.

Child care as a business model is broken. You have a market problem and a supply problem. Frankly, the government, with some help from the private sector, is the only one that can actually offer subsidies to make them affordable for parents.

What about employers? What else could they push the government to do?

It’s no secret, whether it’s paid leave or child care, business often becomes an obstacle to legislation. So this has to change. That’s a lot of the work we’ve done at Moms First – really making it clear that this is an economic issue. … I think during the pandemic, employers have realized how much women have to balance with child care.

Secondly, while we wait for the government to get its act together, (employers) need to do their part. More companies should offer child care benefits, child care subsidies. … What are you (as an employer) doing from a leadership perspective to address the child care challenges in the community you are in?

What role do you see entrepreneurs playing in solving the child care crisis?

The child care industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. It is ripe for destruction. …but in this moment where it’s so hard to be an entrepreneur due to funding (scarcity), I’ve seen a lot of innovations that don’t get the next round of funding. We don’t get things done.

Has this year’s campaign brought you more support from employers?

It was probably one of the biggest professional accomplishments of my life to see child care become an issue. … How can we make child care an economic issue? Check. How can we ensure that this becomes a top-level issue that policymakers start thinking about? Check. Now the next step is: how do we do this? We’ve never been this close.

Well, it was the 1970s when we almost had universal child care.

Yes. That was the last time we were this close.

We’ve grown by about 100%. When I started, people asked, “What are you doing?” Why are you focused on moms? … It is now easier to convince companies to support this issue. It doesn’t seem political anymore. It seems economical. It is now easier to get funding – and high-level funding.

What else are you up to these days?

I just launched a new podcast about midlife. This is related to our work.

We crush the soul of American women by making life difficult for them every step of the way, be it their inability to find child care, mental health issues, our schools, our promotions and job prospects. … For me, this podcast is about helping women realize that. This is a trick, and we fell for it. In fact, this can be the most powerful time of our lives.

FACTS + COMMENT

New “Parental Impairment IndexKPMG’s goal is to not only show how women and men are losing out financially due to childcare options, but also to quantify the number of lost work hours, demonstrating the high productivity costs for businesses that do not offer reliable solutions:

34%: Proportion of men who had to reduce their full-time work to part-time work this year to care for children

1.6 million: The number of employees who either worked fewer hours or went part-time in September due to childcare issues. This figure is 69% more than the average for the same month over the previous four years.

“The index is a clear way for companies to understand labor market tensions,” says Matthew Nestler, senior U.S. economist at KPMG and author of the index. “Lost time is valuable to companies because (it quantifies) the child care challenges their employees face.”

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